Every year, CCTV’s CNY Spring Festival Gala show is an event that many artists from across Asia hope to get the chance to attend, since ‘appearing’ on the show usually means an ‘increase’ in an artist’s worth. Well, for many artists this might be the case, but not for HK’s ‘God of Songs’ Jacky Cheung.

Earlier, CCTV had ‘jumped the gun’ and announced that Jacky was ‘confirmed’ to perform in the station’s upcoming Spring Festival Gala, however not long after the announcement came out, Jacky’s manager Florence Chan denied the ‘confirmation’ – she clarified that Jacky was indeed invited to attend the gala, however both sides were still in discussions and no agreement had been reached yet.

[TN: Instead of translating the paraphrased contents of the statement from news reports (which are often ‘spun’ a certain way), I decided to translate the official statement released by CCTV & Florence Chan instead.]

Below is the official statement in its entirety:

From the moment that this year’s Spring Festival gala committee was established, an invitation to perform at the 2013 gala event was extended to Jacky and throughout that time, the gala committee has actively been in communication with Jacky’s side on the matter. Throughout the [discussion] process, both the gala committee as well as Jacky have treated this opportunity to perform with utmost enthusiasm and sincerity: in its preparations for the event, the gala committee had reserved a spot in the rundown as well as a time slot for Jacky; meanwhile, Jacky himself also allotted time in his schedule for the event.

Jacky has always been a performing artist who possesses extremely high standards for himself. Due to the special importance placed on the Spring Festival event by both parties, active discussions continued to take place these past few months in the hopes of creating a different and worthwhile show to spend the Lunar holiday with Chinese audiences all around the world. This has also been the key focus of the discussions in the past few months.

However, with extreme regret, after months of strong mutual effort, both sides have not been able to reach an agreement on the contents and format of the Spring Festival performance. Therefore, after much careful thought and consideration, Jacky has regrettably decided to give up the chance to appear at this year’s Spring Festival Gala event. Towards the sincerity of the gala committee throughout the discussion process, Jacky is extremely grateful and will forever remember it in his heart! Jacky “sincerely wishes that one day he will be able to fully prepare himself to give a great performance at the gala.”

Towards this decision, the gala committee expresses extreme regret, however we completely understand the reason for the decision and respect it. We believe that all audiences and fans will understand as well.

Ok, as most Jacky fans already know by now, an ‘official’ statement was released by Jacky’s manager Florence Chan and CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala committee confirming that Jacky won’t be performing at this year’s gala event after all.

Well, for those who didn’t know, there’s actually more to this story – it all started a few months back when some lame person (don’t know who) on the gala committee’s side ‘jumped the gun’ in announcing that Jacky was “confirmed” to be performing at the Spring Festival. As most of us fans know, Jacky is invited to the gala every year, but each time, he turns it down. Why? Simple – because ever since getting married and having kids, Jacky has always reserved the Chinese New Year holiday period to celebrate with his family (it has become a ‘tradition’ of sorts). So of course, it’s no surprise that Jacky would turn down the opportunity, being that he is such a family man. That’s why when the ‘confirmation’ was announced, many of us were scratching our heads wondering what was going on – a few of us die-hard fans immediately suspected that perhaps something was up and questioned the validity of the ‘confirmation’. Luckily, there are still some ‘decent’ Media outlets out there and one of them actually called up Mrs. Chan (Jacky’s manager) to ask her – just as we thought, the ‘confirmation’ announcement was ‘false’….the 2 sides were still in discussion and no agreement had been reached at the time. The funny thing is – it wasn’t until the report of the conversation with Mrs. Chan came out that the gala committee ‘changed its story’ to say that they were still in discussions with Jacky’s side and nothing was confirmed yet.

Jacky declining CCTV’s Spring Festival offer has apparently caused a ‘huge’ controversy this time around, especially since Jacky recently appeared on JiangSu TV’s (Mainland TV station) Countdown show this past New Year’s Eve. There are currently all sorts of reports out there that are trying to ‘speculate’ on why Jacky decided to turn down the offer. In fact, one stupid Mainland media outlet even had the audacity to try and drag Jacky’s name and reputation through the mud by “claiming” that Jacky ‘was afraid’ to perform at Spring Festival because he ‘performed badly’ at the Jiangsu New Year’s Eve Countdown show last week! WTF??? That is the biggest LIE I’ve ever heard in my life (and for those ignorant people out there who even for a minute believed what this stupid Media outlet reported – well, go watch the clips of Jacky’s performance at JSTV’s countdown show and then tell me whether that lame report is worth believing or not!!!). [By the way – not surprisingly, the freakin’ Media outlet that reported this LIE is ‘coincidentally’ the same one that printed that FALSE report a couple weeks ago that Jacky didn’t want to appear on a particular Mainland station’s New Year’s Eve countdown show because he didn’t want to be on the same stage as Andy Lau! What a load of crap!]

Ok, I’m going to say this once and once only: Is it really THAT HARD for the HK and Mainland Media to accept the fact that Jacky wants to spend time with his family and therefore turned down the Spring Festival offer? Must there be an “ulterior reason” for every single decision that’s made involving celebrities? I mean, come on people – at the end of the day, celebrities are ‘ordinary human beings’ just like everyone else – they have family and friends that they want to spend time with, just like you and I do! I don’t understand why it’s so hard for some people to accept the fact that there are some celebrities out there who actually value family and are willing to sacrifice huge money-making opportunities in exchange for quality time with their families! Aiye…..

Anyway, now that I got that rant out of the way….my personal take on the official ‘joint statement’ is this: it’s obvious that Jacky and his team are taking the ‘high road’ and giving CCTV a ‘ladder’ to come down (aka saving face for CCTV’s gala committee), since, as I stated above, the committee had made the mistake of ‘pre-announcing’ Jacky’s attendance at the Festival. I mean, let’s be honest here – Jacky does NOT have to justify to ANYONE why he decided to turn down the performance offer and since CCTV pretty much screwed him over with that ‘pre-announcement’ (which was widely viewed as the gala committee’s way of ‘pressuring’ Jacky to accept the offer or risk ‘disappointing’ legions of audiences around the world) – yet he decided to go the ‘forgive and forget’ route and in essence put the blame on himself for not accepting the offer! How many people are willing to do that? I know I probably wouldn’t be able to and I’m not even a celebrity! Definitely speaks volumes to Jacky’s character – no wonder he is so respected by everyone, both fans and non-fans alike!